HASALYNX PRESS
Read Romance Ebooks Legally — Anytime, Online, With a Monthly Subscription

Chapter 1. Cardboard Herbs and a Creaking Gate

The cardboard box weighed almost nothing in my arms, just the seedlings I'd started on the kitchen windowsill two weeks ago—basil and thyme and a stubborn little rosemary that had taken forever to germinate. Their scent rose green and sharp as I pushed through the creaking gate into Edgar's garden, the damp April air carrying that particular Millcote smell of wet earth and something older, something mineral from the creek that ran somewhere beyond the hedge. I'd texted Giada that morning—come over, meet the neighbor, wear something that can get dirty—and she'd responded with a string of emojis that meant absolutely nothing and everything all at once. Typical Giada. I hadn't told her anything about Edgar, not really, just that he existed and that he wasn't Austin and that things were complicated. She'd read between the lines the way she always did, which was probably why she was already ten minutes late and counting.

Edgar was kneeling in the soil near the old square well, his back to me, sleeves rolled up past his elbows in a way that made me stop for just a second too long at the gate. His trowel moved with that careful precision I'd come to recognize—not digging so much as coaxing, turning the earth like he was apologizing to it for something. The muscles in his forearms shifted under pale skin, and I caught myself staring at the tension in his shoulders, the way he held himself even when he thought no one was watching.

"You're going to give yourself a complex," I called out, pushing the gate shut behind me. The hinge creaked—everything in Millcote creaked, it was practically the town motto—and Edgar's head came up slowly, like he was surfacing from deep water.

"A what?" He sat back on his heels, trowel still in hand, and the confusion on his face was genuine enough to make me laugh.

"A complex. You know, psychological term. When someone develops an irrational fixation or anxiety about something." I set the cardboard box down on the edge of his raised bed and crouched opposite him, the wet grass soaking through my jeans almost immediately. "You're working that soil like it personally offended you."

Edgar looked down at the ground between his knees, then back at me, and something in his expression softened just slightly—not quite a smile, but the shape of one, like he was remembering how. "It's full of clay," he said, as if that explained everything. "Hard to work. Needs patience."

"Like someone else I know."

He didn't respond to that, just turned back to his digging, but I caught the way his ears went pink at the tips. I'd been doing that more lately—poking at him, testing the edges of his reserve—and every time he didn't retreat, something in my chest loosened a little more. The friends with benefits thing was still new, still undefined, still strange in the way that anything important usually was. We'd kissed in his kitchen, pinned against his refrigerator like teenagers, and we'd agreed to something that wasn't quite dating and wasn't quite casual and didn't have a name yet. And every day since, I'd been watching him watch me, waiting to see if he'd pull away or lean in.

"So I brought you something," I said, pulling the box closer. "Herb seedlings. From my windowsill. They needed more space, and your garden has better light than mine in the morning."

Edgar set down his trowel and wiped his hands on his jeans—leaving dark streaks of soil on the faded denim—before reaching for the box. He handled it like it might break, lifting one of the tiny basil plants with fingers that I knew could carve stone but were suddenly impossibly gentle. "You grew these?"

"From seeds. It's not rocket science. You put them in dirt, you water them, they do the rest." I watched him examine the roots, the way he turned the small pot over in his palm like he was reading something written there. "I figured you could use something that isn't a tombstone to take care of."

He looked up at that, his grey eyes catching the afternoon light that filtered through the clouds, and for a moment I thought he might say something real—something about loneliness or guilt or the weight of being what he was. But instead he just nodded and set the seedling down carefully on the edge of the bed. "Thanks," he said. "Where do you want them?"

"I was thinking by the well. That spot gets good sun in the morning." I stood up, brushing dirt from my knees, and moved toward the square stone structure that marked the boundary between his property and mine. The well had been capped years ago—there was a metal grate over the opening now, rusted and sagging in the middle—but someone had planted lavender around it once, the dried stalks still visible among the spring weeds. "Rosemary here, maybe. It likes the drainage. Basil over there where it's a little more sheltered."

Edgar followed me with the box, his footsteps soft on the damp grass. He moved like he was always trying not to be noticed, which I supposed was habit at this point—years of hiding what he was, of keeping his distance, of apologizing for existing. "You've thought about this," he said, not quite a question.

"I think about a lot of things. It's what I do." I crouched by the well, running my fingers over the rough stone. "Psychology degree, remember? Overanalyzing everything is practically in the job description."

"That's not overanalyzing. That's planning." He knelt beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth coming off his arm, the slight tension in his body that never quite went away when we were near each other. "There's a difference."

"Is there, Dr. Morten? And here I thought you were just the creepy neighbor who watches me from his window."

He went still at that, and I immediately regretted the joke—not because it wasn't true, but because I'd said it wrong, made it sound like an accusation instead of what it really was, which was an acknowledgment. A thing we both knew and didn't talk about. The psychic connection between us, the way his thoughts had flooded mine in the dark, the way I'd let them in and hadn't regretted it once.

"Sorry," I said quickly. "That was—I didn't mean—"

"It's fine." He was looking at the well now, not at me, his jaw tight. "You're not wrong."

"Edgar. I was joking."

"I know." He picked up a small stone from the ground, turned it over in his fingers, set it down again. "It's fine. Really."

I wanted to reach out, to touch his arm or his hand or something—anything—to bridge the space that had opened up between us in the last thirty seconds. But before I could, the gate creaked open and Giada's voice cut through the garden like a bell.

"Well, well, well. So this is the famous Edgar."